چکیده انگلیسی

Energy efficiency of buildings in the service sector is becoming increasingly important in China due to the structural shift of the economy from industry to services. This paper employs a bottom-up cohort model to simulate current energy saving policies and to make projections for future energy use and CO2 emissions for the period 2000–2030 in the Chinese service sector. The analysis shows that energy demand in the service sector will approximately triple in 2030, far beyond the target of quadrupling GDP while only doubling energy use. However, it is feasible to achieve the target of emission reduction by 40% in 2020 even under the poor state of compliance rate of building standard. This paper also highlights four crucial aspects of designing optimal energy saving policies for China's service sector based on the model results.

مقدمه انگلیسی

China as the largest and fastest growing non-OECD economy consumed 18% of world energy in 2009 (IEA, 2010). The service sector accounts for 7% of China's total energy consumption. From the data reported in the China Statistical Yearbook (2010) and the China Energy Statistical Yearbook (2010), its primary energy use increased from 89 million tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) in 2000 to 150 Mtce in 2006. With an average growth rate of more than 10%, energy use in the service sector expands much faster than the energy consumption on the aggregate level which grows at annual rate of 6.4%.
Due to a high dependence on coal, China emitted 8.33 billion tonnes CO2 in 2010, accounting for a quarter of global emissions (BP, 2011). Moreover, total CO2 emissions in China increased by more than a factor of four in the past 30 years due to rapidly growing energy demand. In the same period, CO2 emissions in the service sector grew even faster, reaching a rate of 7.2% per year, which is almost 38% larger than the aggregate emission growth rate.
Moreover, the structural change of China's economy makes it appealing to explicitly examine service energy use not only for stabilizing future energy demand but also for cutting emissions. The service sector is the dominant economic sector in developed countries, and its importance is rising greatly in China. In 2006, the service sector contributed 40% of the GDP in China, lower than many other countries. The USA has 76% of GDP coming from the service sector in 2003 (World Bank, 2006). Lin et al. (2008) predicted that China's energy intensity would drop by 31% if the contribution of the service sector to GDP reached the levels of USA. Hirschhausen and Andres (2000) predicted that the structural change of China's economy would lower the electricity demand by 10%. The central government of China recently has announced a strategy to accelerate the development of the service sector in the next decade. Hence the service sector will contribute substantially to energy reduction in the future if treated properly.
China has set a standard of 50% reduction of energy consumption compared to buildings built in the 1980s (Standard-2005). By employing a bottom-up cohort simulation model—the SERVE-China model, this paper provides a sectoral analysis of energy use and emission trends when the Standard-2005 is implemented in China. It contributes to a better understanding of future trends and underlying factors influencing energy and emission intensity. Since most of the activities in the service sector take place in buildings, the model calculates the energy consumptions from the perspective of building energy use.
Several papers have studied the significance of the impacts of the service sector on energy consumption and emission reduction. Rosenblum et al. (2000) investigated the case of USA; Alcantara and Padilla (2009) provided analysis for Spain, Catenazzi (2009) for Switzerland. For the case of China, Cai et al. (2009) summarized the situation and challenges of building energy consumption in general. More than 20% of the total national energy consumption comes from building energy consumptions. Low efficiency and huge energy waste of public buildings offer large potential for future energy consumption reduction. Zhou and Lin (2007) explored the reality and future trends of commercial building energy consumption. Also, some studies discussed barriers to energy efficiency in policies towards buildings (IPCC, 2007; Yao et al., 2005). Zhou et al. (2009) highlighted the difficulties of implementation of the building codes in small provincial cities.
This paper differs from above contributions in several aspects. First, most of the papers restrict their attention to the technology level. This study incorporates the economic indicators – GDP growth and energy price – to reflect the future energy consumption from macroeconomic level. Second, existing studies only discuss the barriers for energy saving policies. Information on poor implementation of energy saving policies is integrated into model parameters to illustrate the real impacts of low compliance rate. Finally, this paper synthesizes the Standard-2005 with the government targets, providing a concrete evidence of the weakness of current energy saving policies.
I find that the standard can reduce heating use by 32% and electricity consumption by 8%. This analysis also shows that economic growth contributes largely to the energy consumption. High GDP growth will leads to 17% more heating use and 29% electricity consumption compared to the reference growth. I assess the possibilities of achieving two energy and emission targets announced by the government—(i) quadrupling GDP while only doubling energy use between 2000 and 2020, and (ii) emission reduction by 40–45% in 2020 compared with 2005 level. With current building and energy efficiency standards, target (i) cannot be achieved while target (ii) is feasible. This paper finally highlights four aspects which are crucial for policy makers on designing an optimal energy efficiency policy.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the SERVE-China model. Section 3 describes policy scenarios and the dynamics of key variables. Section 4 presents the simulation results and the assessment of government targets. Section 5 comments current energy saving policies in China based on the model simulation results, and identifies several crucial factors to be considered in policy design. Section 6 concludes the paper.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

This paper provides a detailed view of the near term prospects for building energy saving in China's service sector. By formulating the building Standard-2005 specifically in the model, this paper captures how technology specifications affect the energy consumption and emission reduction. The capability of including the compliance rate of building codes into the model makes the results much more reliable. Three different GDP growth rates are designed to capture the macroeconomic influence on energy use. Starting with similar energy consumption in the year 2000, electricity increases 5–8 times depending on different scenarios, while growth of heating use is flatter than electricity. In energy use for heating, policies such as compulsory building standard show high potential energy saving: 32% of final energy can be saved under a 50% energy saving policy (EVO); economic growth contributes 17% of the energy consumption growth. From the sensitivity analysis we can see the increase in electricity use is much more driven by economic growth, reflecting 29% of the energy use difference between baseline (reference growth) and high growth; energy saving policy (SP) reduces only 8% of future energy consumption. In general, the effects on the energy intensity in the service sector are encouraging: 33% of the energy intensity reduction can be achieved in 2020 and more than 50% in the year 2030.
The model results suggest that at least 26% reduction in emission intensity can be achieved in 2020 and 34% in 2030 (compared with the year 2000 under BAU-high scenario). With the nationwide Standard-2005, emission reduction can reach up to 39%, the target of 40–45% reduction of emission intensity is possible since more strict building energy saving codes are implemented by large capital cities. However, even with such encouraging results, the target of quadrupling GDP while only doubling energy use from 2000 to 2020 is not possible in the service sector under the model projections.
This paper also delivers additional insight for designing better energy saving strategy for China's service sector. Energy saving policies on commercial buildings have to be further differentiated between new constructions and old ones. Cooling energy use will gain in magnitude soon as the economic development. Hence future policies should consider energy saving in cooling in a similar way as heating. Furthermore, CO2 taxes could accelerate the substitution of fuels and stimulate the technology advancement in heating and electricity generation. Also, it is worth noting that professional education and training are necessary for the improvement of the compliance rate.